One-State Solution: the Way to Peace or the Road to Ruin?

Re “Who Needs a Jewish State?” editorial, Oct. 10: The Times believes a one-state solution for Israel and the occupied territories would lead eventually to the destruction of the Jewish state, especially due to the comparatively low Jewish birthrate.

Though the premise for Israel was to create a Jewish national home, much has changed since 1948.

If the state of Israel could exist despite so much opposition, it could exist even if its population were predominantly non-Jewish because the Israeli identity is far more cosmopolitan than on its day of inception. Ironically, Israel has received Jewish immigrants from around the world who have changed the Israeli worldview with the different non-Jewish values they have brought along and added to the Israeli mix.

As the people of Israel have changed because of real-life circumstances, so too must the rest of the world. It would be necessary for the completion of the peace process for us to accept the idea of a state of Israel where all Israeli citizens, Jewish or not, could live peacefully and equally. If such a premise is not acceptable, we would be condemning Israelis and Palestinians to the continuance of bloodshed.

Deepak Awasti

Montreal

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You come down on the moral and rational side of the question, but in the process you misrepresent the facts.

“It took the Israelis decades to accept the idea of a Palestinian state next door.” Really? After reading your editorial, those unfamiliar with the long history of this issue would be surprised to learn that the people of Israel accepted the “idea of a Palestinian state” three times: in 1937 (Peale Commission), in 1947 (United Nations Partition Plan) and, most recently, under Ehud Barak’s premiership, in 2001. The Palestinians rejected partition every one of these times.

Nurith B. Goldschmidt

Altadena

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There will be no one-state solution. That would be suicide for the Jews, and the Jews would never again walk quietly to the trains. Let the Palestinians put down their guns and bombs and there will be peace in Gaza and the West Bank. Let the Israelis put down their weapons and they will be dead.

The Jews did not expel the Arabs from Israel. The Arabs who stayed in Israel, starting in 1948 and now numbering over 1 million, live a life better than any other Arabs, except the very wealthy Arabs.

Harold L. Katz

Los Angeles

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You suggest that the idea of a single, secular democratic state in historical Palestine has something wrong with it: “It’s that such a state would not be Jewish.” Alas, the trouble with the current Israeli state is that it defines itself as Jewish and democratic, a characterization that is a self-contradiction. No state that defines itself by its ethnic qualities can, at the same time, be democratic.

Miriam M. Reik

New York